


All of My Tomorrows

by gabolange



Category: City Homicide (TV)
Genre: Episode Related, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-27
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2019-03-24 18:36:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13817067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabolange/pseuds/gabolange
Summary: Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.Set during 5.05 and 5.06 / “No Greater Honour: Last Man Standing” and “No Greater Honour: Ghosts.” Jen has decisions to make.





	All of My Tomorrows

**Author's Note:**

> With abiding thanks to pellucid for really wonderful beta work. Any remaining errors are my own.

***

He’s alive. She pulls the tape away from his mouth, touches his face, and he’s clammy and too hot and looking at her like she might not be real. But he’s alive. “Nick,” she says again, pushing at the tarp that covers him, taking in his bound hands, the bloodstains and filth on his shirt. Majors hit him with his car and then—she shakes her head. “Nick.” Jen scrabbles to open the truck’s gate properly, to give herself room to reach for him, and he groans.

“Jen,” he says, hoarse, and she doesn’t know if she’s ever been so glad to hear her name. There isn’t time to think about that, not when she needs to get him up and out of the car, get him warm and hydrated and clean. She encourages him to sit up, to test his injuries. He grimaces but complies and soon he is sitting beside her on the truck’s liftgate, hands still tied in front of him. 

“Just you?” Nick asks, eyes darting. Majors is dead at their feet and Rhys—where is Rhys? He went to call for backup and Jen doesn’t know if he had to take the car to get cell signal. She should go find him, holler his name at the very least, but if he’s close he would have heard the gunshots and if he wasn’t—either way he will be back soon enough. The water and blanket and ambulance will follow. 

“Cavalry is coming,” Jen says.

“Looks like I just needed you,” Nick says as his posture falters and he leans against her, the turn of his body towards hers achingly familiar. Just her—that’s what it took, to solve his case, to clear his name, to save his life. Could anyone else have done it? Or just her, with all her ill-gotten knowledge of his intimate life? It was that knowledge, and the terror she still feels beneath her breastbone that she might fail, that she might be too late, that she might wake up to a world without him in it.

But Nick is here and alive, heavy against her shoulder. Jen takes his weight and wraps her arms around him. He smells like booze and piss but she kisses the side of his head anyway, carding her fingers through his filthy hair. 

Jen thinks she should ask: what happened? How long have you been here? What did he do to you? Did you see Alan Sullivan die? She’s supposed to be a cop, securing the scene, calling for backup, but all she can do is touch him, tracing cuts and bruises with her fingers, trying not to make him flinch. He’s not dead, he’s not even all that badly injured, and she rests her forehead against his.

“You need a shower,” she says.

She can feel his smile against her cheek, and if he is well enough for that, maybe she can release the breath she’s been holding since he sent her that text. _Thanks for everything, Jen_ — and it was just that, a thank you, not a suicide note, not the last words she’ll ever have from him because some madman got to him first. 

The knot in her stomach loosens and she holds on for dear life. 

**

The sirens, when they finally come, are a relief. Jen shouts, “All clear!” and “Down here!” and those familiar faces are almost as much of a balm as Nick’s was. Rhys cuts the rope at Nick’s wrists and Duncan drops a blanket around Nick’s shoulders and then another around her own. “I’m fine,” she says. 

Duncan snorts, but she’s grateful he doesn’t contradict her. “Humor me,” he says, and she wraps herself up and lets him lead her to a car. She watches the familiar dance: police tape and scene technicians and her friends, making sure everything is done right. Allie takes her weapon for the shooting investigation, all familiar outrage that it has to happen at all. Stanley, forever reassuring: it’s just a formality, you know that, Jennifer.

Ambo techs fuss over Nick, and Jarvis points fingers in their faces, as if to promise hellfire and brimstone if one of his best detectives isn’t returned healthy and whole. For once, Jen understands the man. She watches as Nick climbs into the ambulance and she doesn’t like the ache she feels, the burning sensation that she should be with him, holding his hand, telling the techs all the things they should know about: his allergy medication, the pin in his ankle from a childhood accident, that he’s precious, that he’s hers. 

Jen closes her eyes and rests her head against the window, holding the blanket tightly. 

She doesn’t know how much time passes before Duncan climbs in to the driver’s seat beside her and she startles as the door closes. Duncan says, “Wolfey wants me to take you back to the office, get your statement, and take you home. Okay?”

Jen nods against the window and her head bumps hard as Duncan pulls the car onto the road. It hurts, and she is a little glad to have something to focus on, pain in her temple, brief and sharp. For a minute, it masks the nightmare scenario she keeps seeing instead of the countryside rolling past: Majors pulling that trigger, glass shattering, a spray of blood. He would have shot her, too—how stupid she was to go in alone. She’s been so reckless these last few days, so unlike her. And all for a man—that’s the stupidest, most reckless part of it. 

She would do it again, just the same, and she shuts her eyes tightly against pricking tears. Nick’s alive, she remembers. 

“Jen.” She wipes her eyes and looks into Duncan’s concerned face. He says, “We can skip your statement if you need. Do it tomorrow.”

She would never have guessed when she met him that Duncan could be so kind; perhaps he wasn’t, back then. “No,” she says. “We should get it done.” Besides, it will give her time to decide what to do next, after that shower and a change of clothes. She’ll never be able to wear this suit again. 

“Okay,” Duncan says, and there’s a long pause before he says anything else. She watches the country turn into small suburbs, houses drawing closer and closer together. When Duncan continues, he’s a little tentative, Jen thinks. He says, “Off the record. There’s one thing I haven’t figured out.”

“About what?” she asks.

Duncan barrels ahead. “How does the journalist fit? With—.” He waves a hand at her, some vague uncomfortable gesture meant to encompass all the things she knows about Nick that she shouldn’t, not if they’re just colleagues or even good friends. His spare key, his watch, the safe in his bedroom. That text she read out for all of them to hear, the shrillness in her voice as she pushed them, pushed herself, to find him, just find him. 

Jen sees it too: their relationship, laid out in obvious little details. And Duncan knows Nick, knows he wouldn’t screw around.

She tries to smile, but suspects she just looks drawn and tired. She would like to put Duncan off, come up with some story better than the truth, but he is too good a detective and, she supposes, too good a friend. And it was the lies she hated most. “I called it off,” she says finally. 

Duncan doesn’t react much, but Jen watches him slide the final pieces of the puzzle together. “Why?” he asks.

Jen shrugs, turning back toward the window. “Work,” she replies. “I said the job was more important.” She’d believed it, too. The years of sacrifices, of other relationships left to wither and die, of finding her footing in this boys’ club and making the job her own: Homicide meant everything to her, just as much, more, than coming home to Nick at the end of the day. 

“That’s bullshit,” Duncan says.

It was supposed to be enough, this job, working with Nick, seeing him every day, making the world a little safer together. She wants it to be enough, and she doesn’t know what to do now that it isn’t. She still can’t imagine doing anything else.

“Yeah,” Jen says. “I guess it is.”

**

Jen drives to Nick’s house in her pajamas, hair still damp from the shower. They had gotten a call at the office that he had been released from hospital, that Wolfey was taking him home, and she had forced herself to finish her statement, to eat, to clean up, not to vomit out of sheer relief. 

But she’s past propriety now and she steps out of her car with a bag packed with toiletries and tomorrow’s clothes. She knocks on his door.

Nick’s wearing only loose-fitting pants, the kind he sleeps in on cool nights. His chest and stomach are mottled with bruises, black and purple and red, and his wrists are bandaged loosely to protect the fragile skin from further damage as the burns from the rope heal. There’s medical tape at the bend of his elbow and on the back of his hand, evidence of blood draws and IV drips, but she sees no sign of broken bones, of anything that won’t heal quickly. He was lucky. She wonders if Majors assumed killing him would be enough.

He lets her look and as she raises her head to meet his eyes, he says, “I’m going to be okay, Jen.”

She nods. She needs to see those bruises fade, needs to see the pallor on his face turn to his usual healthy tan, but she thinks if she can do that she will be able to believe him. “I know,” she says, and she doesn’t expect the wobble in her voice, the lump in her throat. She isn’t prepared for his arms around her, drawing her in, his broken skin under her cheek, the beat of his heart against her ear, his fingers at the base of her skull and the curve of her waist, his nose in her hair. 

She digs her fingers into his back and cries.

He tightens his hold on her with every sob, almost too tight. She’d known how much she’d hurt him when she’d left, but she feels it in his grip, the fear that this won’t last, that she’ll walk out again. She wants to say she would never do that to him, to herself, but the words stick in her throat. She wants him desperately but still doesn’t know how to make it work, not with the politics and unspoken rules and impossible choices. She still doesn’t want to give up her job for him, for anything. 

Maybe the Ethical Standards investigation will take it out of their hands, but she doesn’t want that either. She told him to fight, to stand up for himself and his reputation, and he will. She wants to see him fully reinstated, the corruption charge cleared from his record, back at the desk next to hers where he belongs. She wants to see him blink awake every morning, warm with sleep and desire, curled up beside her in bed, where he belongs just as much. 

She doesn’t know how to have everything she wants.

Nick strokes her back, and maybe he can feel all the fear and confusion in her tears. “Shh,” he says. “I’m okay, Jen. I’m okay.” 

She nods against his chest and takes a deep breath, trying to steady herself. She runs a hand across her eyes and nose, trying to clear the mess of tears and snot. “Sorry,” she says. 

He brings his hands to her face, wiping away her tears with his thumbs. She thinks he’s going to say something, offer a new reassurance, but instead he just leans and kisses her, soft and familiar, and she can’t help more tears from falling as she kisses him back. She’d thought that she could live her whole life without kissing him again; now she twines her hands through his hair and wonders how she could have been so wrong about so many things.

He’s alive and he’s hers, and she wants that to be enough, too. He presses lips to her forehead and says, “It will be okay, Jen.” She tries to believe him.

**

Jen sleeps hard, and if she dreams of blood and death she doesn’t remember as she wakes. The sun is high in the sky and she blinks at the clock on the side table; it is past ten, and she is alone in Nick’s bed. 

She hates the panic that crawls under her skin: where is he? He can’t be gone, not again. She had fallen asleep with his arm tight around her waist, his breath behind her ear, and she had been able to relax for the first time since—she can’t remember. Days? Weeks? But now he isn’t with her and Jen pulls the blanket from the bed and wraps it around herself to ward off the creeping anxiety. She hasn’t imagined the last twelve hours, he’s here, somewhere, he must be—.

He’s not in the bathroom, so Jen pads down the stairs to the living area. And there he is, curled in the corner of the couch with a cup of tea resting on the ottoman and a plate of toast balanced on his lap. Jen lets out a shaky breath. “Morning,” Nick says.

She sits beside him and tucks up her knees, pressing herself into his side, and Nick wraps his arm around her shoulders. She feels better now that she’s touching him, tracing the sickly yellow sheen of the bruises on his chest. He’s alive, but now they have to decide what happens next, and she hardly knows where to start. “Hey,” Jen says, her voice muffled against his shoulder.

“You okay?” Nick asks.

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” Jen responds, then sighs as she feels Nick shift beneath her cheek. “Sorry,” she says, twisting the blanket between her fingers and wondering what to say. 

The time between Juliette’s death and Nick’s kidnapping brought them closer together again, a slow crawl back to partnership and affection. She’s still the one he trusts, still the one he will fight with and listen to, and his quiet confidence in her is a gift she hasn’t always earned. She’s still the only one who could have saved his life, and she’s as sure of that today as she was yesterday.

She loves him, even if she had tried to forget. She loves the way he navigates the world like he finds it interesting, with a house full of books and a camera full of snapshots of little things no one else would ever notice. He pays attention, and she always laughs at his wry observations even though it’s what makes him a good cop. A good partner, a good lover.

She has no right to be angry about Juliette, but it’s there anyway, that bubbling jealousy about a fling she knows wouldn’t have meant much if Juliette hadn’t ended up dead. Jen had been the one to call it off, but she still hadn’t been prepared for what that could mean: that he might one day love someone else. She’d fought not to walk out of the box when she’d heard it—but it wasn’t her place to be upset, and she’d chosen that.

They have spent too many years in this awkward in-between, not quite lovers but not just friends, and it is more familiar than being together. But it isn’t working, not anymore. 

Mine, she thinks as she breathes him in, and she can’t lose him, not now, not ever again. Not to another headstrong woman and not to the job, not if she can’t be right there beside him. 

The job. It has taken so much from both of them: his reputation, quite possibly his career, almost his life. Yesterday, she killed a man and was glad for it, and her younger self would recoil at the thought. She had wanted this job to help find justice for the dead, but now she’s killed, twice over. There are holes in both their lives where hope used to be, all because of this.

She wishes it made her want to walk away. 

But she can’t. She loves the challenge of it, the way the most complicated puzzles bring out the best in her and all of them, her team, sometimes broken but always brilliant. And there is more good to do, more families who will never have peace but for whom she might bring some closure. She doesn’t think there’s any other squad on the force that could give her all of that, and when she found Homicide she stopped looking.

She found Nick in Homicide, too. She’d liked him as Wesley, too much, the way he’d insisted on fixing up the hovel of a house they’d shared, humming along to whatever she chose on the radio. But she’d hated the assignment, had run from it the minute it was over, swearing never to do anything like it again. 

She’d missed him, more than she’d known, and Homicide had brought him back to her—but just him, without pretense. When he doesn’t have to choose his words carefully for the cameras or wear the persona of a man he should hate, she’d learned that he’s wittier than she’d known and as kind as she had expected. Too much experience meant they were good together on the job, so good, right away, but he’d given her the space she’d needed to learn how to be his friend and his partner and more. 

He’s giving it to her now.

Working together in Homicide is what brought them together and then what tore them apart. But God knows it’s easier than the rest of it, the part where she can’t imagine waking up without him, the part where she wants and wants and cannot have.

“Just a lot to think about,” Jen says finally and meets Nick’s eyes. “I promise I’m thinking about it,” Jen says.

**

Jen goes back to work the next day, and Allie catches her by the elevator. “How’s Nick?” Allie asks without preamble. Before Jen can answer, Rhys has appeared at Allie’s shoulder, all concern and absolute certainty that she knows the answer to their questions. 

It’s not an ambush, but it feels like one. She says, “He’s doing well,” though she knows that is inadequate. She has sat by too many colleagues’ bedsides to be mollified with platitudes, and Rhys and Allie won’t be either. Their faces wobble between sympathy and curiosity, bursting with intimate questions they know better than to ask.

“No, really, Jen,” Rhys says, as Jen elbows past to get to her desk.

Jen sighs. “No, really,” she says. “Nick’s okay. He thinks he’ll come back to work tomorrow.” She’d frowned at him about that and he’d raised his eyebrows, a silent argument that she’d lost to the memory of last year’s gunshot wound and his distaste for making a fuss. “You can ask him yourself.”

“Idiot,” Allie says, but she sounds affectionate and impressed, and Jen laughs for the first time in weeks. 

“That’s what I said,” Jen says and they smile with her, and for a moment it almost feels normal to talk about fond private conversations in his home on a shared day off. But it isn’t, it can’t be, and she ducks her head and gestures at the papers laid out on her desk. “This isn’t going to file itself,” she says, and waves them off. 

She’s not going to be able to avoid conversations about Nick today, as much as she’d like to. She set herself up for them with every word she’s spoken in the last weeks, so obviously his confidante, so much in the know. And everyone will want to know. 

She has barely turned on her computer before Stanley appears at her desk. “Jennifer,” he says. “Good to have you back. A word, if you have a minute.” She stands and follows him, and he closes the door behind them.

“Nice work,” Stanley says, coming around to sit behind his desk. Jen settles into the chair across from him as he continues, “Both resolving the Majors case and tracking down Detective Buchanan.” He picks up his pen and taps it against the blotter. “I will be putting you up for a commendation.” 

Jen smiles, and it feels a little wan. She did everything she could, and it was enough, but barely. She was almost too late. “Thank you,” she says.

“Of course,” Stanley says. “I also expect the firearms investigation to be resolved this week. From everything we’ve seen and read, it was a clean event.”

She nods. “It was,” she says. “Majors was going to shoot Nick—.” She doesn’t like the way her voice rises, the panic that’s still right beneath the surface: Majors was going to shoot Nick, and there are so many other ways this could have ended.

Stanley holds up a hand. “I read your statement,” he says, and Jen nods and falls silent. 

She remembers the first time she shot someone, the way she’d shaken all the way home and then sat on the sofa for days, staring at the television. Everyone said the first time was the hardest—but there wasn’t supposed to be a second time. The second time wasn’t hard at all, though, and she’d pulled the trigger once, twice, three times to make sure Majors was dead. To make sure he couldn’t shoot Nick. It felt good.

She’s distracted and is caught off-guard when Stanley says, “About Nick.”

Jen shifts in her chair, raising her eyes to look at her boss again. “What about Nick?”

Stanley quirks his lips up in that odd movement she knows heralds something she’s not going to like. He says, “You know it is our policy that detectives on the same squad not have intimate personal relationships.”

Jen starts to reply, but Stanley holds up a hand and Jen closes her mouth. She’s not sure what she would have said, anyway. Stanley continues, “You’re both good detectives, Jennifer,” he says. “I don’t want to lose either of you if I don’t have to.”

She can’t tell if he’s giving her a warning or an offer—it could be the latter, but Wolfey has always played by the rules. It’s one of the reasons she likes him so much, especially now knowing that Nick’s mentor had turned out to be dirty. No matter what Nick said, she’d never have to worry about Stanley Wolfe double-dealing or planting evidence. But she also likes him because he is kind when he needs to be, and this could be a kindness—.

She doesn’t know and it doesn’t matter. She and Nick aren’t anything right now except stuck. 

**

Jen can’t remember the last time there was a meeting like this with their crew and all the second stringers and the uniforms that support their team. It can’t be good news, and the air buzzes with concern and bad ideas: that Waverley is resigning or Wolfey is retiring, that the union has failed to negotiate the pay raise they promised, that overtime rules are changing, that the firearms rules are changing. 

None of them expect what Waverley says, that Homicide is done for.

It’s a personal vendetta, the sort of thing that will be bad for the state and bad for the people it serves, as if Lombardi could give a shit about that. Rhys calls out Waverley for cowardice and Jen is glad for the first time that she’s his auntie, because he can say what all of them are thinking. Voices rise around her, surprise and anger and so much fear.

Jen doesn’t hear Nick’s voice in the cacophony, though he’s here, back at work where he belongs.

The shift is supposed to be over, but Jen goes back to work, even though she’s still pushing paper while they wait for the result of the shooting investigation. She doesn’t know what she’s going to do, not without this. It has been everything for so long.

None of them have left the office. Not Allie, with her arms crossed over her chest, scowling at Matt and the world. Not Stanley or Jarvis as they huddle in the corner, the oddest of friends plotting their next moves. And not Nick, who sits beside her at his desk, peering at his computer, restless. 

She only gets three more days of this with him, and that’s the most unfair part of all of it. She’d made this uneasy, painful trade, giving up Nick in the way she wants him most in exchange for his presence by her side in the way she needs him most, and now that’s being taken away, too. 

She tastes acid on her tongue and wonders what else this terrible week can possibly bring. 

Her phone buzzes and she grabs it off the desk. “Jennifer Mapplethorpe,” she says, not bothering to check the caller ID as she steps away from her station. And word gets around fast, because it’s her old sergeant in Fraud offering her a job—“it’ll be a fast track, I swear, Jen”—and she swallows hard and says she’ll think about it. 

She wanders to the break room. Fraud. She thinks about the white-collar criminals she used to arrest, arrogant hedge fund pricks, wealthy bastards who could be put in their place with a paper trail and a well-placed word. It’s not what she wants. She’ll hate it.

But what would she like more? Arson? Serious Crime? There’s a chance there she might still find that sense of putting the world to rights, but after Homicide it might just be as much of a letdown as Fraud—what a terrible thought. She doesn’t want to lose the job or her team, and she doesn’t like any of her choices now that she has to.

Jen sighs. Maybe Fraud is it. If she’s going to step back from Homicide, maybe she should take a break from death and violence, from the memory of the pull of the trigger under her finger, from the ever-present visions of Nick dead in Majors’ truck, from the impossible truth of Nick alive and still out of reach. Maybe it’s a good option. Maybe it’s good enough.

It hits her with a force that knocks the wind out of her: maybe it’s the perfect solution.

If she’s not in Homicide and Nick’s not in Homicide—if there is no Homicide—.

She can’t be grateful, not to Lombardi, not for this abrupt, stupid, careless end to the only life she has ever wanted. She can’t be glad. But as she collapses onto the old sofa, she has to admit what she feels is relief.

If it isn’t her decision, if circumstance is going to force an end to this—. If she can have the other thing she wants most in the world—.

Nick is alive and she loves him and soon she won’t have to hide from that anymore. She lets herself smile to think of it.

**

Jen tells him to give Fraud a miss, and the hope in his smile matches the warmth curling deep in her stomach. She grins and starts toward the door, but Nick catches up with her in a stride. “Well, don’t just leave it there,” he says, voice low in her ear, so close behind her she can feel the warmth of his body. 

It’s a plea and a proposition, and Jen has to remind herself where they are: at work, spitting distance from the officers who could ruin Nick’s career with the stroke of a pen. She can’t kiss him here, or even reach for his hand to ease the ache she feels to have his fingers twined between hers. Her voice is almost level as she asks, “Buy you lunch?”

Nick rests his hand lightly on the small of her back. “Just not that terrible sandwich shop,” he says as they enter the elevator. 

They wind up at the terrible Chinese place instead, and order soupy lo mein and salty peanut chicken to share. They trade containers back and forth and he pretends to frown as she takes more than her fair share of the rice. She can’t wait until it’s habit again, until she gets to see that bemused look over breakfast every day as she picks the raisins out of his muesli. 

Nick tosses his chopsticks to the side and instead twirls his noodles with the cheap plastic fork. She’s about to tease him about it, but he suddenly looks seriously at her and asks, “Was the only problem both of us being Homicide cops, Jen?”

She isn’t expecting that and doesn’t know what to say. She spears a piece of chicken on the end of her chopstick like a child and takes too big a bite to avoid answering him. “The biggest problem,” she says finally. “The one I couldn’t figure any way around.”

She drops her chopsticks to the plate and stares out the window. She remembers five days away, five sleepless nights spent trying to solve the impossible, failing. She couldn’t find a way around that tacit but immutable rule: don’t screw the crew. Not even if you love them.

The few women who advanced had done it by being above reproach, by toeing every line. Of course, everyone said they’d slept the way to the top, but Jen knew that it was the opposite: they’d made it by never giving in, not once. The men could notch their belts, but not the women, not ever.

She’d figured she’d get sent back to Fraud the moment it came out, and now she could almost laugh at the irony. 

“I just wish we could have talked about it,” Nick says, frustration bleeding through his voice. “What if I’d said I would quit? You didn’t even ask.” Jen blinks at him, startled. She has always figured he loves this job the way she does, deeply and exclusively, and she can’t fathom the idea that he would walk away any more than she could see him cashiered by Ethical Standards or busted back to uniform. Besides, she would never ask that of him, just as she refused to let him or anyone else ask it of her.

But now they don’t have to choose and she doesn’t know how to make him see what a gift that is. “I’m sorry,” she says. She hates that she hurt him, hates that she put him second because that will always nag at her, even if it wasn’t about that, even it was about choosing the best of difficult options. Maybe she should have said that, but she doesn’t think it would have changed anything. Not then.

Nick sighs. “It’s moot now. But Jen, there will be other problems. If we’re going to do this, we need to be able to talk about them.” He leans over, quiet and sure, making sure she looks him in the eye. “I want this with you. But you can’t make these decisions for both of us.”

She nods slowly, staring at the food slowly congealing in front of her. She hears his implication: that even this, her sudden happy reversal, was made on her own. She’d assumed he would be overjoyed—she’s heard the longing in his voice every time they’ve spoken in the last few days, and before. She thought she was giving him what he wanted. 

She doesn’t know what she will do if he puts her off, if they don’t get this chance. No Homicide, no Nick—she can’t, no, can’t do that. She takes a breath to steady her voice as she tries to say something that will keep this from flying apart under the weight of old arguments. She says, “I know. I will do better, Nick. I will.” 

She looks up and meets his eyes, and she doesn’t try to hide the fear that beats alongside her heart. It is her constant companion now, and each day it takes a new shape, each more terrifying than the last. She won’t lose him, not like this. “I want to make it work. So much.” 

He reaches across the table and grasps her hand, and his fingers are warm as he threads them with hers. “So do I,” he says, and his voice shifts, deep and inviting. Nick kisses the back of her hand and smiles, and in a gesture he’s hers again. 

**

Jen steps into her house alone, but she has barely put her bag down when she hears the knock on the door behind her. She opens it and finds herself close in Nick’s arms, lifted off her feet, as he kisses her and stumbles toward her bedroom. 

Her fingers burn with the restraint of the last few hours spent sitting beside him at work, of the last days spent wanting and refusing to give in, and she fumbles for his shirt and his belt, desperate now there’s no reason to wait. 

His fingers find the bend of her waist and the curve of her breast, and he kisses her neck as he undoes her bra. She falls in love with the flash of unyielding desire in his eyes when he finally has her naked. 

She isn’t going to need much before she’s ready, just the pinch of her nipple between his fingers, the barest brush of his hand between her legs. 

There is a bruise low on his hip that she hasn’t seen until now, black and purple, and she lets herself stroke it as she pulls him closer. His erection presses against her, hard and smooth, and she lifts her hips just enough to tease. But today is not for teasing, and so she shifts and he slips inside her.

He starts slow, reminding their bodies of each other, and she wraps one leg around his waist, feeling the sharp point where his hip meets hers. She has missed him, missed this, and it is good already but it isn’t going to be enough, not today. She almost lost him twice this week, first to Majors and then to her stupid, malignant inability to change her mind, and she barely believes he is here, kissing her cheek, her neck, pressing inside her exactly the way she usually likes. It’s not enough, not even close; she needs to know his want matches hers, needs to feel his heart pound under his ribcage, needs to feel how deeply he can love her.

“Harder,” she whispers, tightening her legs around him to draw him in more firmly. “More,” she says and he falters, meeting her eyes with a questioning glance. She can’t explain, not right now, and so she simply says, “Nick, please,” and the word is a whimper, and she can't remember ever sounding so needy. 

He gives himself over to her, hips pounding, thrusting over and over, hard and fast, and she digs her nails into his shoulders. Now she can believe he is alive, finally, with shared sweat beneath her hands and between her breasts, the wet heat of them where he pushes into her, harder, more, the pain perfect as he stretches her with every move. 

He tightens his grip on her hip as she rises to meet him, and she will have a bruise to match his, but oh, let him mark her, let them both bear the evidence of this on their bodies, the scrape of his teeth in the juncture of her neck, the barest outlines of fingers pressed into skin out of need instead of hatred.

She hears herself incoherent with desire, wanton and wanting, just for him, only for him. “Oh God,” she says as he thrusts hard, and instead of his face she sees stars as her body shakes with pleasure. He’s still moving as she comes out of it, and she grins and meets his eager pace, threading her fingers through his hair, her other hand pressed firm against his back. “Nick,” she says, as desire picks up within her again. Her belly floods with warmth and she will be sore tomorrow but now she can’t imagine ever stopping. She wants more, still more. “God, Nick.” 

Jen shifts her hips, seeking a different sort of friction, the press of his pelvic bone against her clit—she likes his hands where they are, tight on her breast and hip, she doesn’t need fingers for this, doesn’t need anything but this perfect angle, his breath harsh in her ear, her name on his lips over and over. She doesn’t need anything but him, come alive beneath her hands and between her legs, the heady flex of his muscles beneath his skin. “Nick,” she breathes.

She tries to remember what she was thinking when she gave this up, but it seems so far away right now, a different life, different choices. Impossible to remember now as her heart pounds and he gasps her name. He twists his hips and she yelps, surprised into another orgasm, wave after wave of pleasure flowing through her, and he smiles against her skin as he comes, shaking in her arms.

He breathes heavily for a moment and then shifts, rolling to his back and pulling her with him. She settles on his chest, and would fuss over his bruises but he doesn’t seem to notice, let alone mind. He rests his hand low on her back, stroking the skin there with his fingertips, and she wriggles. “That tickles,” she says, kissing the skin closest to her.

He laughs and stills his hand. “I see,” he says, and he hasn’t quite caught his breath. “God, Jen,” he says, and she can hear the contentment and lingering surprise in his voice. “What was that?”

“I missed you,” she says, and kisses his chest again. But that’s not all of it, and she promised to try, to do better with this. She pushes herself up, careful not to land an elbow on a healing rib, and kisses his mouth. “I spent three days thinking you were dead,” she says finally. “And I keep waking up and forgetting I was wrong.” 

He looks at her carefully, deep brown eyes searching and warm. The sweat is still cooling on their skin, and she can already feel the rise of a blemish where he’d sucked at the skin of her breast. “That felt like pretty good proof,” he says, smoothing the hair away where it falls across her eyes.

She nods. “I hope you don’t mind,” she says, and he barks out a laugh before drawing her back down against him. She tucks her head under his chin, the beat of his heart fast against her cheek. 

“I love you, you know,” he says. “And I’m not going anywhere.”

She finds his hand and threads their fingers together. “Me neither,” she says. 

**

She wakes to the play of Nick’s fingers on her breast, practiced movements slowly coaxing her awake. He takes his time, kneading and fondling, as his hands wander from her nipple to her belly to between her legs. His mouth is soft on the back of her neck and the shell of her ear, lips and tongue barely touching, the gentlest start to their day.

His first thrust inside her makes her gasp, and she rocks against him, his name a devotion on her lips with every motion. She comes apart under his hands and, after, she turns to kiss him. She loves the lazy desire in his eyes, barely sated, the way he tangles messy fingers in her hair, unconcerned to spread the smell of them across her pillow and her skin.

“I could wake up like this every day,” she says.

He kisses her shoulder, sucking gently on the fragile skin there. “Every day,” he agrees, and she thinks he doesn’t mean the sex so much as the two of them together, in her bed or his, every morning and every night. She remembers when the prospect of the future he’d offered seemed like it would take so much, the way she’d clawed against that permanence because it couldn’t exist with all the other things she wanted.

“I love you,” she says by way of agreement, and smiles as she kisses him. She thinks it is a commitment as binding as if they’d stood up in front of a judge and their friends and families, and it doesn’t scare her like it used to. 

She wants it all now, those little moments that make a life: the softness of voice when he talks to his nieces about ballet recitals and young love, even though the job could have jaded him long ago. She wants him coming to the dinner table covered in sawdust because he’s lost track of time and hates to make her wait, even though the mess irritates his fastidious streak. She wants so many more mornings like this one.

This is a lifetime, if both of them get their way, if fools like Dane Majors and Warren Endicot and the rest don’t put an untimely end to it. 

She’s a lot less likely to run into their ilk in Fraud. 

Fraud. She’ll be back there on Monday, and Nick—. “Did you decide where you want to be transferred?” she asks him after a moment, and he shrugs, propping himself up on his arm as he considers. 

“No,” he says. “Anything that’s not patrol will be fine.” 

She hates how relaxed he is about this, the idea that he might go down for corruption he didn’t commit, the thought that he might have to spend the rest of his days in a squad car because no one will take someone with a charge like that on their record. “Why aren’t you more pissed off about this?” she asks, sitting up to look at him. “You’re one of the best detectives I know.”

He smiles. “That’s kind of you,” he says, reaching out with his free hand to stroke her skin. She thinks he means to calm her, to encourage her give in to whatever is going to happen. They’ve already lost Homicide, they’ve almost lost each other—how can he just roll over on this? Nick says, “What’s that old saw? Something about accepting the things you cannot change?” 

Jen stares at him. “So you won’t even ask for a good assignment?”

Nick stops the roll of his fingers on her stomach and sits up to face her. “Do you think it would make a difference?” he asks, and Jen wants to say yes, but she’s been around this place almost as long as he has, has given in to too many of its unspoken truths to argue. With Stanley and Matt, he has standing, but outside the walls of Homicide, she doesn’t know. She wants him to be wrong, but right now she doesn’t know how to have faith in anything but the beat of his heart beneath her hand.

“I don’t know, Nick,” she says. “I want you to try.”

He nods, and she can’t tell if he’s conceding her point. Instead he says, “You took the first thing offered. You know you can do better than Fraud squad.” 

She smiles and shrugs and reaches out to trace the line of his neck with her finger. “I know,” she says. He’s right: she will be bored in a week, furious again at Lombardi and the world for taking something she loved so much. She says, “Nothing else will ever be Homicide,” and she might as well have made his point for him.

If it’s not Homicide, it’s just another job, the thing to pay the bills and let them live their lives. Nick is here beside her, today and tomorrow and forever, and it will be enough. 

**

Cantor has irrefutable dirt on Lombardi. He will testify, turn state’s evidence, bring the whole conspiracy crashing down around their heads. It could be the thing, it might be, it should be. Jen tries not to think about what that might mean or how long it could take. She’s not sure they can put a case together before Homicide goes down. 

She isn’t in the bullpen when everything comes together. She’s talking to the investigator about the shooting, answering perfunctory questions about Nick, about Majors, about if she’d had any other choice but to shoot him in the back. She’s not sure she sounds competent rather than bloodthirsty when she says, “No, it was the only option. Another officer’s life was in danger. My life was in danger.”

But she is cleared for full duty and swings back to Homicide with a grin, ready to tell Nick, to ask Stanley for one last day of real investigative work before she heads to Fraud. The scene before her is not what she expects: nervous energy and ecstatic whispers and Waverley in the middle of it all with a whiteboard.

It’s Allie who fills her in, bouncing on her toes: Ethan Derwent has agreed to wear a wire. Tomorrow morning, they will put the plan in place to bring Lombardi in. Nick will go on the op, an extra fuck you to Lombardi. And then, then, they’ll still have Homicide, they’ll still have jobs. “I can’t believe it!” Allie concludes.

Jen hopes she doesn’t look as faint as she feels. 

She stands outside the group, close enough to hear, and crosses her arms over her chest. It’s good news—it is, especially for Nick. His career hangs on this, on their ability to get real testimony that it was Dalton who was corrupt, that Nick was just the dupe. For him, she wants this to go perfectly. For all of them, Allie and Rhys and Duncan and Matt, for Stanley, for the people they serve, for every future homicide victim. 

But—. 

She’d told Nick last night she wasn’t going anywhere, and she’d meant it. She intends to keep that promise, made in words and flesh; to do otherwise would destroy them both, even if it’s only been one night, one morning. She can’t lose him. She won’t. Not ever again. 

It’s been a litany since she found him, the only thing keeping her from giving in to the dread that still creeps against her field of vision when she can’t see him. She can’t lose him.

But the job—. 

Homicide. The only career she’s ever wanted, the one she’s lost and cried and sacrificed for. The only thing she has ever wanted more than Nick. No, that’s not right—not more. 

She understood what it meant to choose this job, this life. The way forward, following in Wolfey’s steps, or Waverley’s, or something all her own. She’d watched both of them lose too much, seen their families fall apart before her eyes; it was easier not to start down that path than to imagine what it might look like for her. She’d never wanted all that anyway, especially not if she couldn’t keep it. 

She’d been wrong. 

Yesterday, she had given all of this up with the barest protest, lip service to the death of a dream, because it meant she could be with Nick. She’d grabbed that unwanted, unwarranted opportunity with both hands, never to let go again. Every minute she has with him is a gift. 

She tries not to tremble at the realization as it washes over her. This time, if she has to choose, it would be different. She can live without the job. She can’t live without Nick. 

But—. 

She loves this stupid job, loves this place, the bustle around her as the smartest people she knows hurry to do their part to make their world just a bit better. It has taken so much, but it has given her even more. 

She can live without it, she can. But she doesn’t want to, not if she doesn’t have to. 

She still doesn’t know how to make it all work. She wants to be with Nick and work with him in Homicide. She wants to break the rules without consequence, without secrets or gossip. She wants and wants, and the more she wants, the more complicated it seems. She made the wrong choice last time, but now—.

In so many ways, nothing has changed. She takes a breath. Not nothing. There’s Nick, who said he’d wished they’d discussed it, who said they could make it work if only she asked him how.

The team files out and Jen snags Nick’s sleeve, catching her nail on the cotton. He looks down at her and smiles, soft but a little fearful of what she might say. Jen tries to smile. “Can we talk?” she asks.

**

They sit in her car. Jen doesn’t turn the key, just rests her hands on the steering wheel, staring at the wall of the parking structure in front of her. There’s no time to go anywhere anyway; there’s going to be a briefing at seven and another at ten, all hands on deck before the big operation tomorrow. 

But the last time they met like this, she’d left him, and it feels like an inauspicious start. Nick is looking at her warily, as if she chose their location for the symbolism instead of the privacy. Jen says, “Stop that. I’m not leaving you.”

Nick lets his head fall on the headrest with a thump. He closes his eyes and she sees the relief as his body settles with a breath, his shoulders sagging slightly. She reaches out and covers his hand with hers, closing her fingers around his palm. He turns his hand and threads their fingers together, holding tightly.

Jen says, “I’m not leaving you. But—.”

“But you want to stay in Homicide, too,” Nick says. “If everything goes right.” 

Jen nods. 

“I’ll request a transfer,” Nick says. “To somewhere good, even.” He smiles slightly, and Jen stares at his sanguine, happy face—he would, he would give this up for her. But she would feel guilty, ever mindful that he chose this for her, always frustrated that she couldn’t do the same for him.

“No,” she says. “That’s not what I want.”

He shifts, turning to face her as much as the chair will allow. “Jen,” he says, “it’s just a job.” He untangles their hands and lifts his fingers to her hair, stroking her head as she feels her breath catch. “I don’t need Homicide like you do. We don’t even know if they’ll let me stay.”

“Don’t say that,” Jen says, that reflexive defense of him that will get her in trouble one of these days. 

“Jen,” he tries again, voice soft but firm. “I love this gig. Of course I do. But I would never get in the way of your career. You’re going to run this place in a couple of years.” She hates how reasonable he sounds when it is all she can do not to cry. Nick continues, “I keep trying to tell you.”

His frustration at the terms of their breakup, his aborted resignation, his ease in the face of the Ethical Standards investigation—. “Fine,” she says. “You don’t need this job. You can paint houses or write traffic tickets and it’s all the same to you.” 

“That’s not what I said,” Nick says, and she can hear the waver in his tone as he tries not to raise his voice. 

Jen leans forward and rest her head on the steering wheel, the vinyl cool under her forehead. She takes a breath, then another. She’s not trying to misunderstand him, but she has been fighting so long for him, and she can’t stand that he could throw it away. Even for her.

There’s too much left for them to do together for him to step back now. She wants him next to her at their flimsy desks, pushing her to be a better cop the way he always has. “I love working with you,” she says, voice muffled.

“I know,” Nick says, and he rests his hand on the back of her neck, rubbing circles under her hair. “But I thought being on the same squad was the one unsolvable problem. Problem solved.”

She pushes herself back up. “It isn’t a problem for me,” she says, finally. “We can be together and work together.” They did it before, briefly. The only complication was her constant worry that someone might find them out or turn them in. Jen can almost appreciate the irony that no one knew until Majors, when they weren’t together anymore.

She turns to look at him and purses her lips. “I just can’t lie anymore, Nick. We did it for too long.” 

He nods, the twitch of his eyebrow conceding her point. He strokes her face, his thumb running across her cheekbone. “We could try being straight up,” he says after a moment. “See what Stanley has to say. He can keep both of us or he can keep you.”

She tries to smile and leans into his hand. There’s a chance it could work. She trusts Wolfey even if she doesn’t trust Matt or Jarvis or Waverley, and maybe his good word would be enough to overcome all the reasons they’re not supposed to do this. Maybe he’ll laugh them both out of his office. She says, “Stanley said something about not wanting to lose us both.”

Nick huffs a sharp laugh. “You talked to him about this?” he says, incredulous, but he doesn’t stop the brush of his hand on her skin. 

“He brought it up,” Jen says, defensive. “But then it didn’t matter anymore.” No, she was going to Fraud and Stanley was going to retire—they could have held a contest for most rapid onset of professional misery. Wolfey loves the work like she does, Jen thinks, and she wonders if that will make a difference if they ask.

Nick runs his thumb over her lips and she gives him the kiss he wants. “Is it worth a try?” Nick asks. “Worst case, he says no, and I go paint houses or write traffic tickets.”

She grabs for his hand, pulling it away from her face and holding it tightly in her lap. She stares at the blank wall ahead of them, rough gray concrete crossed with electrical wires. It’s almost soothing, the monotony of it, the way they could be anywhere, anyone. She says, “You told me not to make choices for us, but this feels like it’s being taken out of our hands.”

He can ask for a transfer or he can ask to stay, but if she wants honesty and she wants Nick, they have to put the question of working together on someone else. “No,” Nick says, a quiet vehemence in his voice, and she meets his eyes. “I choose you, Jen. Every time.” 

She doesn’t know what to say to that, so she leans and kisses him, pressing his mouth open with hers so she can touch her tongue to his, savor the taste of his last cup of coffee on his lips. When she pulls back, it’s to rest her forehead against his, and it’s awkward with the gear shift between them but she doesn’t care. “Okay,” she says. “Okay.”

**

Nick brings Lombardi into the interview room in handcuffs and everyone cheers. They raise a glass to Homicide, to all of them, this squad Jen loves. Nick slips away before the party is over.

She finds him at home. No, second thoughts, she tells him, and he kisses her like he thought he might never get the chance again. She knows that feeling now, the shiver that makes her look for him across every room, love tinged with the spectre of loss. She will never stop looking for him.

She could kiss him forever, but they drive to the crime scene and this is what she wanted, what she will always want: Nick by her side as they head off to another scene. He says, “Stanley said he would kill me if I hurt you.”

Jen raises an eyebrow and Nick continues, “I told him he would probably have to get in line.” It’s probably true, but needless. He will never hurt her, not any more than he could in a fight over dishes or laundry they’ve already had a hundred times. She’s the one who causes trouble.

She asks, “And if I hurt you?”

Nick laughs and says, “There seemed to be some leeway there.” 

Jen nods and takes his hand. For now, she has everything she ever wanted, somehow. Homicide and Nick and a secret to share, when they want to. She has seen how easily it can slip away.

They pull up at the scene and Nick turns off the car. “What finally decided this for you?” he says, gesturing between them. 

She reaches out and straightens his tie. “You did,” she says, and they go to work.

***


End file.
